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anderspitman

Reminds me of a web page I stumbled upon many years ago. It was very much visually designed in the 90s style.

The whole page was dedicated to tips and tricks for surviving falls from very high distances. I only remember 3 points:

* For most of the fall, try to spread out like a flying squirrel to reduce your terminal velocity.

* As you get close to the ground, rotate to take the impact primarily on your feet and legs.

* After you bounce, try to land on your feet again.

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after you bounce is a terrifying concept.

Didn't it also mention that a lot of survivors hit some type of slope?

Not sure if it was the same one but I've read you also want to avoid water (since it doesn't compress). Go for dirt/grass if possible.

That doesn't make sense: dirt/grass also don't compress. Small branches might be good, but water is certainly more compresible than dirt.

I agree that it seems unintuitive, but compressibility of water is up to four orders of magnitude lower than a very plastic clay, and even worse than gravel[1]. Generally the speeds at which we impact water are slow enough that this effect is not noticable (i.e. we have time to sufficiently displace, not compress, the water without suffering a catastrophic deceleration).

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compressibility#Earth_science

This sounds like something that would have been perfect for MythBusters.

Dirt/grass _absolutely_ compress. Easy way to see - take a large hammer outside and hit the dirt real hard. It'll leave a dent. You want to leave that dent, because that's force transferred into the dirt, not you.

But also, it makes sense when you think about it a bit, too. Dirt is a mostly heterogeneous mixture of _stuff_ that tends to clump, which leaves great pockets of air in between that can get compressed out. Water, on the other hand, is a homogeneous liquid with _no_ air in between. There's practically nothing to compress!

It's really not. Earth's generally full of holes big and small. Water isn't.

You're probably referring to this amusing read: http://www.greenharbor.com/fffolder/carkeet.html

Probably, I saw this thread earlier today and couldn’t find that page until later.. found it but you beat me to it!

A great read.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parachute_landing_fall

Possibly?

http://www.greenharbor.com/fffolder/carkeet.html

Definitely very similar in spirit; nice find! Doesn't feel like the same one though.

> As you get close to the ground, rotate to take the impact primarily on your feet and legs.

That makes it sound a lot easier than it actually is.

You've probably got a minute or two to practice, yeah?

Not that hard for an experienced jumper.

I remember that page

Any idea what some good search terms might be to find it? Googling hasn't yielded any leads for me yet. Good chance it's down but maybe it exists on archive.org somewhere.

"unplanned freefall" will get you there. ;-)

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